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The thing about sharing a bunk with someone is there's no place to go if you want to throw up in privacy.

So he doesn't.

Instead, Wash stumbles into the kitchen, falls into a chair with a graceless clatter, and braces his forehead with both hands as his throat works. The book slips onto the table in an awkward triangle. A handful of pages curl under its weight.

One breath.

kids with mixed blood --

Two.

-- their entire families --

Three.

-- certainly deserves to receive a gift for --

And he's up and rushing for the sink without comprehending it until he's halfway there.

A few minutes later, after he's let the tap run and rinsed out his mouth, he totters back to slump in his chair.

Wash, with a little help, absconded back to Serenity yesterday to find his long-unused get-well gift from Mal. It's still ponderous going without some kind of support, and besides, he's been waiting to show off that cane for months.

He ambles along, free hand shoved in the pocket of his jumpsuit -- it hasn't stopped feeling slightly awkward yet, having nothing to hold as he walks -- humming with no real tune (or destination) in mind.

Trust the black. Above all else, pilots say, you trust the black. Space makes no apologies, no excuses -- it may not keep you safe, but it'll never pretend otherwise.

Wash took it to heart after the atmo instability on Tellus killed his family; the instability that he'd thought had killed his family, anyway. Because now he's sitting here in the Reading Room of Southdown Abbey with the last of the waves, Mom and Dad and Annie wishing him a happy New Year and a speedy recovery from that scrape Uncle Andy said he'd gotten himself into a few months ago, and resting a hand above the keys that'll initiate a new wave to Dunbar, Muir, Allenmore Quadrant.

He sits there for a long time, and when he types, it's one slow command at a time. Five minutes wasted.

Another five vanish as he watches the blinking cursor after the last command, until the calm female voice prompts him to execute it within the next ten seconds if he wishes to connect. While his mind keeps hesitating, his fingers seize the moment and hit the final key to execute.

Each of the waves are about five minutes long, give or take the events of the month. Wash pages through them in an aching, homesick silence, broken by laughter at the slightest things: Annie singing 'Happy Birthday' for an April twenty-second twelve years past, complete with cameos from a pair of dinosaurs he'd left behind when he went to flight school; Dad's enthusiastic retelling of a corny joke he'd overheard the other day ('...and the other one says, "HOLY SHIT, A TALKING MUFFIN!"'); Mom's simple but heartfelt New Year's wishes, interrupted by the sudden appearence of a kitten swatting at the vidscreen.

All of them end with the same gently chiding plea to wave them back when he has a minute. He quickly learns to keep his finger poised on the fast-forward control for those last ten seconds.

After two and a half hours, though, Wash notices that dinnertime's creeping up on him. Reluctantly, he grabs a handful of data sticks and slots them in, downloading the rest of the waves before logging off of his extraneous account. He slides the sticks into his jumpsuit, takes his crutches, starts to head for the dining area.

He's barely taken five steps before he changes his mind and goes toward the women's dorms instead.

And the pilot didst grumble to himself from underneath the console as he re-patched a stray wire that'd been knocked loose.

The pilot didst also have a stegosaurus on hand to help fish out the other end of the wire from the mess of knots. For the dinosaur had many spines, and was pointy, and made a good makeshift prod-at-the-wires-until-they-come-loose tool.

Oh, yeah, he remembers Crowley's explicit instructions to leave the boxes alone. But you know how the saying goes: "I'm bored, paralyzed, and had a small armada of doctors hacking away at my spine twenty-four hours ago. I'm allowed to be curmudgeonly."

(Okay, if it wasn't a saying before, Wash is decreeing that it damn well is now.)

When he gets around to waking up -- the remains of the medication keep him conked out until almost one in the afternoon, local time -- Wash finds his crutches, finds some breakfast, and then finds the room with the biggest number of cardboard boxes crammed inside its four walls. He kicks a few aside to make room and drops onto the bit of exposed carpet, crutches rattling as he shoves them against the wall.

Wash dozes for most of the return flight to Crowley's, head drooped on Zoe's shoulder. Every so often, he eases back toward consciousness, mumbles very solemnly that he is not naming their daughter Eustace, and falls back asleep.

By the time they reach the flat, most of the meds have worked their way out of his system. Still a little groggy, but coherent, he's helped inside by Zoe, Mal, and a few of the transport attendants.

The room they get him situated in has a cardboard box on the nightstand, sheets of glossy paper piled over its rim. As Zoe steps out to find them something resembling dinner, Wash cranes his neck to try and get a look.

It goes gear-to-ground with the broad dislike of most things doctorly. The one he went to when he was a kid had a distinctly awful habit of being unable to do things like find veins, keep the rooms warm, and take throat cultures -- a staple part of any checkup for the Tellus citizenry -- without making him gag. It tends to put you off of anyone in the profession when you come home from the doctor's with what feels like a steel brush jammed down your trachea.

"Bentley mid-range tug, this is Firefly Serenity here for the rendezvous. You copy?"

"Serenity! There you are. We've been looking for you."

"Yeah, sorry about that, we're coming in off Munro and the orbital vector tossed us out a couple extra clicks."

"Munro, huh? This time of year?" A chuckle. "Bet the traffic on those docks didn't do you any favors."

"Oh, God." An answering laugh. "Not so much, no. We set?"

"We're set. Tow line up and connecting in five, four, three...."

Click.

"So, what's the story when we get there? I know we're docking at the BA labs and meeting up with Mr. Crowley to -- "

"Ah, Mr. Crowley got called away on some business, it turns out."

"He did?"

"Yeah. Fàngxīn; we've got a transport all set to take you to his estate. He told us you'd been around before, but if you need any help getting settled in, we'll be glad to do it. And he said you might need another transport out to the Marcus Medical Center later today?"

"Welcome aboard in an official non-mayhem capacity. We got a couple of spare rooms downstairs -- and if I get stuck in the grates," this is said a little sheepishly, as he wiggles his crutches, "just help me yank these gorram things out of it?"

En route to Hadrian, just after lunch -- and with the minor debris belt surrounding Taye due to swing across their path in ten minutes -- Serenity's starboard radar beeps out a warning.

Wash logs off of the Cortex and pulls up heat vid without missing a beat. The boat's a small one; a lowbulk transport hardly even twice the size of Serenity's shuttles. It keeps pace with the Firefly in silent curiosity for a few seconds before passing overhead, the radar blip shifting from starboard to port to match.

He gives it an uneasy glance through the windscreen, then shakes his head and returns to work.